Going to Sleep
by Samara007
Summary: Just a JTVictoria drabble I wrote a few months ago...I may write something longer in the same vein if there's any interest.


She lies curled against him on the couch, heading towards sleep. They aren't, she isn't, ready for the bed yet. Smiling a little, she thinks that they have yet to make it to the bed. The first time it was her couch, then his. Now she doesn't have a couch, so they stay here in his little apartment, and strangely she feels safer here than in any of the various mansions she's ever lived in. She hasn't felt this safe since..._Ryan._ The thought whispers over her like a benediction. She can almost feel it stroke her skin. He would have liked J.T. She is almost sure of it.

This could be very good for her, she knows it. She's never done easy before. Married three times, almost a fourth, numerous boyfriends, and it was all so very hard. Too much and too hard for someone only her age. This shouldn't feel as easy as it does. There is still Brad, Colleen, the baby. Her skin tingles with the memory of his voice, telling her to put his name on the birth certificate. She would, in a heartbeat, except...So much from him, and he hasn't even said...For a moment, she sees a future with him behind her closed eyelids. Warm. Easy. No complicated business business to come between them. Baby. Family. Real family, not the kind she grew up in with the fighting and the marriage roulette. The kind she was heading toward before him. A slight sigh of breath tickling her head, a gentle, gentle hand in her hair and she realizes that she could have this. All of the rest of it could just fade away. Everything with Brad felt so over, like a memory of a dream rather than something that really happened. Colleen was gone, too, in a different life now, with her professor. She was pretty sure he didn't miss her anymore. It was just them. She could just let it happen. Her consciousness begins to swim as she slowly gives in to the warmth and safety she can't help feeling...just let it happen. Her breathing evens out and she falls, knowing that in the morning, his arms will still be there.

She is slowly relaxing in his arms and he can do nothing but stare. She is laughter and excitement and pain and sex all mixed together in a heady scent that he can't get enough of. He knows her better than anyone, he thinks, no matter that he really hasn't known her all that long at all, because he actually sees her and not just the image projected onto her by everyone else. He knows she has lived epics in her liftime, has seen her personal affairs splashed on the tabloids over the years. The stalker, the almost-brother, the dead fiancee. She hasn't spoken of any of it, but it doesn't matter, because _she_ isn't _that_. She is only beautiful Vicky, who smiles at him like he is saving her.

He wants her so much. _Wants_ to save her. Wants to protect her. Wants to make all the drama of her life just done. Wants the baby too, which he clings to with the thought that it could, there is a chance, it could be his. She says it probably isn't, but it doesn't matter anyway, because it is hers. Feeling this should be frightening, considering his history, but it is so far from frightening that he can't even name the distance, and that is a little scary. Everything that has led to this, to her, seems like something he only watched from a distance. The teenage angst with Brittany, Billy & Mackenzie, him and Mackenzie, even Colleen feels like something that he only imagined. Once not so very long ago she was the center of his life and now he looks at her and just feels nothing, because compared to this, it was nothing.

He could have it. They could have it. He can feel it everytime he catches her watching him, eyes dancing and speculative. It could be good. He could be good, for her, he knows he could. She is asleep now, he knows because her breathing is deep, and her body is more relaxed than it ever is when she is awake. Very softly, he rests his head against hers and wonders, soaking up her scent, her ease with him. He is going to make it happen.


End file.
